All posts in Lifestyle

Shacking up: How to Move In Together (Without Killing Each Other).

by Dr. NerdLove on April 20, 2012 in Advice, Lifestyle, Relationships with 2 Comments
iStock_000017812626XSmall

Moving in together is one of the biggest milestones for a relationship; it’s up there with marriage and starting a family in terms of signs of commitment and investment. It’s also incredibly appealing – splitting the cost of living 50/50, hot and cold running sex whenever you want it, not having to maintain two households, the thrill of waking up with the man or woman you love in your arms… it’s almost enough to call your honey and tell ‘em to start packing their bags, isn’t it?

Of course any dream can turn into a nightmare without warning. You’re expecting the sort of cohabiting bliss that you normally only see in sitcoms from the 50s, but what you get instead is the roommate from hell. You don’t know who this obsessive-compulsive demon is and what he’s done with the guy you thought you were shacking up with. The awesome “bangin’-out-on-every-flat-surface-in-the-apartment” sex has turned into “Once a month if the stars are aligned perfectly and there’s nothing better on TV.” Every conversation is a fight about money, chores or how you spend your free time.

You’re just about ready to choke a motherfucker and hope that they technically qualify as a recyclable rather than having to wait for the bulk pick-up. Where did your happy fantasy disappear to?

The unavoidable truth is, moving in together will inevitably change your relationship. You’re going to be sharing more than just living space and expenses, you’re going to be sharing your lives. So if you’re going to make the big leap into living together, you might to make sure you’re going to do it right.

There aren’t any guarantees in life, but following these tips will help you avoid turning your domestic bliss into a single-bedroom nightmare.

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The 5 Most Common Insecurities In Men (And How To Overcome Them)

by Dr. NerdLove on April 16, 2012 in Be A Better Person, Health, Lifestyle with 55 Comments

It should come as no surprise that confidence is a big deal when it comes to success at dating. Confidence, after all, is sexy.

The problem of course, is that confidence can be hard to come by. Confidence boosting is a big-money industry these days. Even the Pick-Up Artist community is flooded with products designed to help men with what they call “inner game” issues. But for all for all of the times we wrestle with issues of deservedness or a scarcity mentality, there are certain areas where men are just especially vulnerable.

Men are more sensitive than culture gives them credit for. For all of the proclamations of manliness and machismo and how men just don’t worry about the same things that women do, the male ego is surprisingly fragile. We may be able to endure the jocular insults and shit-talking that are often part and parcel of male friendship but there are certain areas that are just off-limits. They’re little emotional Van Der Graaf generators of anxiety that serve to wreck a man’s self-esteem, prompting him to throw hundreds or thousands of dollars towards any snake-oil or hokum that promises to fix the issue.

"Now with 100% more bullshit!"

 

The problem is, of course, in your head rather than on it… or in your shorts, for that matter. But let’s look at the top 5 most common insecurities in men… and talk about how you can overcome them.

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So You Want To Be Non-Monogamous…

by Dr. NerdLove on April 13, 2012 in Lifestyle, Sex, varsity level with 85 Comments
METAPHOR!

So today it’s time to talk about a tricky subject: monogamy.

We’ve talked about monogamy before and why it’s not our natural state, but it’s worth addressing again. Life – when stripped away of any philosophical or intellectual meaning or value – is solely about making sure that we survive long enough to spread our genes. Ideally, we hang in there long enough to ensure that our offspring live long enough to spread their genes even further, but once we’ve raised children to puberty our job as a living organism is technically done. Most of our biological drives are oriented towards that one goal. Males want to ensure the survival of their genes at the expense of their competitors; if it’s possible for them to con another male into raising their offspring, so much the better. Females also want to spread their genes; because the investment (and subsequent risk) is much higher, they will want someone who will help provide and support their child and those traits don’t always match up with the genetic traits that will her theoretical children survive. As a result, sometimes the father of the child isn’t necessarily the one raising it.

Our very bodies evolved with the idea of multiple sexual partners in mind. Scientists theorize that part of the point of a woman’s orgasm is the vocalizations it causes, which attract other men. Our entire reproductive system is designed with sperm-competition in mind. The penis’ flared head acts like a squeegie inside the vaginal canal, scraping out seminal fluid from a competitor. Men who believe that there is a chance that their partner has had sex with another man will actually produce a greater volume of ejaculate in order to flush out a competitor’s sperm. Hell, there have been studies that suggest that humans have goddamn hunter/killer sperm cells – ones that can’t actually penetrate the ovum but instead serve to block other people’s sperm like tiny Terminator linebackers.

An artist's concept.

Once again: this is strictly a strictly value-neutral observation. The fact that monogamy is not our natural state does not mean that monogamy is inherently bad or a poor choice, nor am I saying that it is one way or the other. What I am saying is that it’s goddamned difficult. Being monogamous means that you’re not having sex with other people, not that you don’t want to.

And for some people, monogamy is a poor choice, the sexual equivalent to trying to shove a bear into a tutu and trying to make it dance. It might work for a little while, but it’s all going to end in blood and tears.

So let’s say you’re one of those people who understands that they’re just not cut out for monogamy. Or perhaps you’re someone who has been happily monogamous for years but now you’re feeling the need for variety. Can you be non-monogamous without being an asshole who cheats on his or her significant other?

Yup. As long as you follow the rules.

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What Does It Mean To Be A Man?

by Dr. NerdLove on April 9, 2012 in Be A Better Person, Lifestyle, Sexuality with 78 Comments
AKA: "Why the fuck is this guy getting more tail than me?"

Give love advice to dudes for long enough and eventually you come up on the question of “What does it mean to be a man?”

At first, this question may sound like basic Philosophy 101 material, the same sort of intellectual masturbation that we think is, like, soooo deep after a couple of joints or bong hits at 3 in the morning in your dorm room. The first instinct is frequently to give a flippant answer and move on. “Being a man means being able to fold a map and never stop for directions.” “Being a man means getting yelled at for forgetting to put the seat down.”

Then you start to realize that, no, this is a serious question. For the last several decades, society has been grappling with this nebulous sense that somehow, we as a culture have “lost” what it means to be masculine. Sociologists, pundits, and writers – male and female, feminist and otherwise – have been wrestling with the idea of what makes a man, whether we’ve lost sight of it and if we have, whether this is a good or a bad thing.

The anxiety about what manhood manifests itself in myriad ways. As the economy crashed, news media began to run breathless articles about the “man-cession” – the struggle for men to find or keep work while women outnumbered them for the first time in the workplace. Universities were thought to have reached a point of crisis as male attendance began to wane and the performance of male students flagged behind women. Pop culture brings us shows like Mad Men wade into the nostalgia of a lost era when “men were men”  while fantasy series such as The Walking Dead or Game of Thrones externalizes the concept of masculine power versus feminine in a realm where the rules as we know them have been tossed aside and every day is a literal struggle to survive. Movies celebrate the overgrown man-child and what it means to grow up. Men, desperate for an external source to help quell the insecurity and nagging feeling that something is missing turn to groups that promise to restore that feeling of “manliness”, whether it’s the Promise Keepers or the Pick Up Artist community.

Society tells us that we’ve lost something… but nobody seems to knows what, exactly, that it was, or how we lost it. Some blame women for stealing it from us, or for convincing us to give it away. Some blame our culture and how it’s evolved. All we know is that something is off, but we don’t know why or what to do about it, so we’re casting about for answers.

The idea of a growing “masculine crisis” is a popular one; it externalizes the feeling of angst about  who we are as men and what we’re supposed to be doing. Now instead of a nebulous feeling, it’s something we can understand: it’s a threat, a problem… something we can take action on rather than sitting around and worrying about it. Of course, to do that, we’d need a better idea of just what the issue is… but never mind that! Crisis! Rawr!

So… let’s talk about it. What does it mean to be a man in the 21st century? Strap yourself in, this is gonna be a long one.

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Conquer Approach Anxiety

by Dr. NerdLove on March 16, 2012 in Advice, Lifestyle, meeting women, Skills with 11 Comments
"So we were thinking of going to this wine bar later... would you like to join us?"

One of the hardest parts of meeting new people, for men and women, is that initial approach. Whether you’re in class, at the bar, hanging out at a party or at the bookstore, the idea of approaching that hottie you’ve had your eye on for a while sends shivers down your spine.

You take a step towards her, trying to figure out what you’re going to say. Your heart starts to pound. Your mouth goes dry as your palms start to sweat and your thoughts start racing. You manage to go through hundreds of worst-case scenarios in your mind, each worse than the last, in seconds. You freeze in place.

You’re suffering from approach anxiety. And it’s holding you back from meeting that hot girl or guy.

Approach anxiety is a particularly apt phrase created by the Pick-Up community to describe the feelings of anxiety and fear that we feel when we attempt to meet strangers that we’re attracted to. It covers the gamut from mild nervousness to full-blown panic at the very thought at trying to go up to an attractive man or woman and introduce ourselves.

It’s not terribly surprising that people suffer from approach anxiety. After all, you’re going up to someone – sometimes a complete stranger, sometimes someone you only know obliquely – a classmate, a regular customer, the hot barrista or store clerk – and trying to persuade them into being interested in you romantically and/or sexually. To the socially inexperienced, it can feel like you’re being judged, not just on what you have done at this specific moment but on everything that makes you who you are.

Approach anxiety is all about avoiding fear and conflict and how humans respond to fear stimulus. If you want to get over approach anxiety, you have to learn how to handle that fear and overcome it.

So let’s talk about just how you do that.

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